snocone:syberpud:The dude has some mental issues. The Wired contributor who did a story about him (on the Kindle store) goes into his past: family troubles and a long history of drug use: pot, cocaine, LSD and possibly bath salts and others. Led to a lot of paranoia and probably psychotic episodes.

Minor point, sorta a cart/horse thing.His psychosis led to his multiple drug abuse might be a better statement.

/just like w/ guns, the problem is still the human

snocone's probably got this one right. A normal person doesn't tend to do reams of different types of drugs just for shiats and grins. If he's been doing all those different drugs his whole life, plus family issues, well I'd imagine he's been unknowingly self-medicating himself. And when someone unstable uses the wrong medication...*psychotic break*

Without looking it up, can anyone name an export (aside from coffee, drugs, and sex-slaves) that Guatemala gives us? Honey? Leaves? Beads...maybe they make beads there.

/I will buy some beads, dip them in honey in honor or G-ma. If I'm lucky, a bear will not attack nor will they slide in my anus//exhaustion post over

Other countries do actually have immigration laws. As do we. The main complaint against our immigration laws in America is that they unfairly punish people who may not have had a choice in coming here\punish people who are victims of our War on Drugs.

Also, it really doesn't matter if Guatemala exports bear anuses; they're a sovereign nation and that needs to be respected.

skinink:What an idiot. First he retires to a country who has a reputation as a corrupt country (surprisingly there's no data on them on The Corruption Perceptions Index). Then he gets into some issues with the Belize police. Then he gets involved with a murder. He flees but regularly keeps in touch with the press while he's on the lam. Then he has some bloggers or whatever take a picture with their smartphone, and the picture's EXIF data reveals his locations.

For a rich dude he's a complete idiot. Why couldn't he just retire to Europe? He could have gone to any country there and had hookers for life if sex was a big consideration of where to go. And he wouldn't have had to worry about corruption so much.

It's my understanding that he went to Belize because:

a) Belize has a bit of a rep as a tax haven, compared to Europe (yes, even Switzerland will now report US bank accounts to the Treasury, so no good on hiding taxable assets there--and no, not even voluntarily giving up US citizenship will absolve you of tax responsibility if you actually owe taxes).

b) Much more to the point, though, Belize has a reputation of being a Good Place To Go if you have a judgement against you in a US court because Belizean courts will not enforce said judgement as long as it doesn't involve a felony.

Which would be good for McAfee, because he had been targeted by quite a number of lawsuits in the US.

And interestingly, after at least one round involving lawsuits over McAfee "cramming" McAfee Antivirus customers by subscribing them to paid third-party services without permission.

That's probably not why he left, though--there's also a wrongful death lawsuit against McAfee in the US dating from 2006 (specifically, relating to the death of his nephew and a passenger in a hang-glider based "trike" ultralight that was doing canyon flights--it seems that the survivors of the passenger are suing McAfee as he managed the ultralight club in question and there are serious questions over his nephew's qualifications to fly at all much less with passengers). When it started looking seriously like McAfee could lose all his assets in said lawsuit, he suddenly left as CEO of McAfee and ZoneAlarm and went into "pharmaceutical research" in Belize.

tl;dr--this isn't the first time he's been linked to a death by misadventure, and he's basically attempting to make himself judgement-proof by putting himself in the closest jurisdiction available where the US government can't persuade a national government to seize his assets in judgement.

And a bit more (pretty much the tl;dr version) of why McAfee likely bailed to Belize in the first place (namely, in an attempt to make himself judgement-proof in the first death-by-misadventure he seems to have been involved in) and how this is likely to blow up spectacularly in his face.

Apparently after he ran like a biatch to Belize, he worked very hard to throw the ultralight club he founded (and left) under the bus to take the brunt of the lawsuit--the same co-owner who basically told McAfee that the whole idea of flying hang-gliders with strapped-on engines into canyons was a Stonking Bad Idea, much less the idea of having newbie pilots fly "training" passenger flights into said canyons.

Oh yes, John McAfee sounds like a charming fellow. About as charming as a case of tertiary syphilis, even. :P

onyxruby:I find it hard to be sympathetic to the guy. He deliberately moved out of the US just to avoid taxes. He didn't want to contribute his financial share to American society and moved out of the country to make sure he didn't have to. Part of what you get in exchange for those taxes is a far less corrupt police force than places like Central America. If he's innocent he should avoid prison etc....

/It's like asking me to be sympathetic to someone that pisses into the wind.

What exactly would his financial share to American society be? Is he supposed to pay for your local fire department or something? I don't feel he owes me anything in particular. Were you thinking you should receive some part of his wealth for some reason? That doesn't make any sense at all. He makes money selling people things they want, and he does so while paying all the required fees and taxes, and then he owes something to someone else in addition because he didn't piss all his money right away?

Big_Fat_Liar:onyxruby: I find it hard to be sympathetic to the guy. He deliberately moved out of the US just to avoid taxes. He didn't want to contribute his financial share to American society and moved out of the country to make sure he didn't have to. Part of what you get in exchange for those taxes is a far less corrupt police force than places like Central America. If he's innocent he should avoid prison etc....

/It's like asking me to be sympathetic to someone that pisses into the wind.

What exactly would his financial share to American society be? Is he supposed to pay for your local fire department or something? I don't feel he owes me anything in particular. Were you thinking you should receive some part of his wealth for some reason? That doesn't make any sense at all. He makes money selling people things they want, and he does so while paying all the required fees and taxes, and then he owes something to someone else in addition because he didn't piss all his money right away?

Well, the "moving out due to taxes" is somewhat inaccurate (it's actually more likely he moved out to avoid having assets seized in a wrongful death suit that an ultralight club he owned was involved in, and specifically involving him allowing his nephew to give "training" flights with minimal licensing or training of the nephew in question).

That said--with the 1 Percent, it does seem that they've forgotten this little thing called "noblesse oblige", and (more precisely) that noblesse oblige does not mean "Fark the Poor, I Got Mine" but "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" (quoth the Spiderman).

Basically, even in Royal Times it was seen that people who had a lot of money and/or power...well, yes, they did have a shiatload of money and power, but (theoretically) this money and power were supposed to be used to the betterment of those who put them there in the first place. (Even Chinese emperors had a variant of this--the "Mandate of Heaven", which not only pretty much stated the emperor was placed there by the gods to keep things running in the earthly realm, but that if he did a shiatty job that the gods could "revoke the mandate" and allow the emperor to be overthrown by someone less full of fail.)

Now in practice, it didn't always work like this--humans do tend to be bastard-flavoured bastards with bastard filling--but the whole idea still works with the rich, and there are some--like Bill Gates, like Andrew Carnegie--who were bastards in the business world but gave back in the world when not making fistfulls of cash.

The general concept of higher income tax rates on the rich is kind of a "legal version" of noblesse oblige--you're richer, so you should pay more of a share to keep things running for everyone (yes, even you; even the richest still use public roads and police and firefighters and FAA-licensed-and-maintained airport facilities).

onyxruby:I find it hard to be sympathetic to the guy. He deliberately moved out of the US just to avoid taxes. He didn't want to contribute his financial share to American society and moved out of the country to make sure he didn't have to. Part of what you get in exchange for those taxes is a far less corrupt police force than places like Central America. If he's innocent he should avoid prison etc....

/It's like asking me to be sympathetic to someone that pisses into the wind.

The most American of all beliefs is freedom of the individual over the desires of the government. At least, the American the founding Father's fought for. Freedom from oppression and tyranny, remember all that jazz?

The idea that you should be forced to pay taxes to help the greater good of the country is pretty much the opposite of an American value.

Fark_Guy_Rob:The most American of all beliefs is freedom of the individual over the desires of the government. At least, the American the founding Father's fought for. Freedom from oppression and tyranny, remember all that jazz?

The idea that you should be forced to pay taxes to help the greater good of the country is pretty much the opposite of an American value.